Sunday we reported on an interview with an MSI manager, who stated that internal research had shown that the return rate for the Linux version of MSI's Wind netbook was four times as high as that of the Windows XP version. He claimed that the unfamiliarity of people with Linux was the culprit. This claim sparked some serious discussion around the net, but now MSI's statement is being repeated by Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu.

You can make a Windows "LiveCD." It's called WinPE. There's also an unofficial version of the same thing called BartPE.

People probably aren't doing this extensively now, but it is possible to infect the firmware of a machine so that even a CD environment is not enough to remove the malware. Fortunately that didn't happen to you or your son. I'm frankly surprised that you even allowed your kids to use a non-Linux OS.